Character Variation Exercise

(note:make sure you click on the images to see them in full size! Void likes to make things tiny)

I've seen a lot of articles and posts about lack of variation in female character lately, so I thought the earlier artists start to tackle this problem the better! Take a serious look at your characters' faces and body types, do your characters look all the same in face and body like this?

Or do all of your males look awesome and different but you fall into the trap of making all of your women the same body type like so?

While lack of variation doesn't necessarily make you a bad artist or designer, you'll find you have a lot more fun playing around with a variety of characters instead of relying on a bland template.

I want you to all take some of your characters and make simple silhouettes of each of them without clothing so we can see their body structure. Does everyone all have the same exact body type? If so, fix it! Especially watch your female characters' bodies and faces, as those are issues that even Disney has been struggling with for years. This exercise isn't exclusively about female characters as male characters can fall into the same problems too, it's just an overall exercise to get you to change things up. Remember women don't always have to be pretty and men don't always have to be handsome, ugly characters are a blast to draw.

Here's a lineup of several of my female characters as an example for what I'm asking for.

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